The truth is that our entire world is upside down. Every
cell in this universe is corrupted by the fall.
When we preach, we don’t simply present a truth, make an
offer or demonstrate the relevance of an ancient text. Every biblical passage
is a heavenly assault on the unquestioned assumptions of a fallen world. That
is to say, we don’t really live in a neutral world with some evil “out there”
and some good information in the Bible.
The truth is that our entire world is upside down. Every
cell in this universe is corrupted by the fall. Yet we love to live in the myth
that we are objectively evaluating a normal reality. Then when extremes come
before us, we are the arbiters who can discern what is extreme and what is not.
This results in people listening to the Bible and trying to find something
relevant, rather than hearing the absolute revolution it speaks into our
fallen, me-first, self-loving, circumstances-determine-mood world.
So when we preach, what are we doing? Sure, we are
presenting the truth of the passage. We are inviting people to meet the God who
reveals Himself in His Word. We are showing that the ancient text is more
relevant than anything we hold to be truly contemporary. But we are also
bringing a heavenly critique of all that we believe to be normal.
Tomorrow I will share a devotional from Psalm 46. It is a
wonderful Psalm of comfort for people fearing the destabilization brought by
human enemies. The LORD of hosts is with us, He is our fortress. That changes
everything. He will utter and war will be defeated forever. Here we are,
understandably concerned by what we see going on in the world, perhaps even
fearing for our future and our children’s future.
But the Bible challenges
assumptions we don’t even recognize, and as we encounter the message of a
passage like this one, we find our whole paradigms recalibrated to the reality
we can’t see.
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